What's the most "daring" thing you have ever done?

MsCyprah - I was very interested to read about your time in America - what a wonderful thing to be able to help to get Obama elected - well done. Here's hoping he has another term to try to carry through his policies.

Talking about heights reminded me of another scary thing. I was in my mid to late 40s and we all went to Seaworld on the Gold Coast. Our two lads loved the water slide - a very very long and high one - and they persuaded me to have a go. I got up there and looked down and wanted to turn back but people were behind me and so i had to do it. I was utterly terrified, screaming blue murder, and going faster and faster.... At the bottom I staggered off, stamping my feet in fury. A lifeguard was there to see if I was OK. I just said 'that was utterly and absolutely horrible" and looked around for my family.

They'd hidden, disowning me.

They still laugh at me when they remember.

I am a 'heightist' too. Can remember screaming at the girls to get back from the edge - of the walls around York! Yet I was the one who enjoyed every moment of a helicopter flight over the Grand Canyon....bizzare! Cant do a step ladder but can do that.

Margaret I think we have all done that one! It is so scary and you get all worked up to confront the intruder and then feel daft because it wasn't one!

When I was being mobbed at work I suddenly found the courage to confront this person and really tell her off. I didn't shout, I just said it had to stop. My outburst lasted about 5 minutes and then I left and went home. It stopped !

Another time, alone with a 3 year old in the next room, middle of the night I heard a noise. I picked up the hammer- which I always had by my bed in those days when DH was in still in Germany, and with a beating heart went to investigate. It was a metal coat hanger which had fallen to the floor of the wardrobe. As soon as I saw it I knew that was the noise I had heard.

Elegran I feel exactly the same. When we went to the top of St Peter's in Rome I had to stand as far back from the edge as possible and felt really ill while DH was enjoying everything from the very edge and there wasn't even any danger of falling.

I think there are a lot of brave/courageous/stupid - make your own choice people on GN. Not me, I am far too cowardly although I do think I am braver now than I used to be.

So very true .

Exactly, nonu and it is not a "fear" of heights, it is a physical reaction with a physical cause.

Elegran , oh I get it now , exactly the same thing happens to me . I tell myself it is stupid to have an irrational fear of heights , I even used to get nervous when getting on escalators going down to the tube , till DH told me to just look straight ahead, that worked for me .

At least once a year, I have to climb onto my kitchen flat roof, and cut back the ivy from next door, as it tries to sneak under the roofing.
I always have my phone in my pocket though!

Giving up a safe career in teaching to take a job in Monaco. Obviously, heights are not a problem for me, but watching other people rock climbing makes my knees turn to jelly.

P.S. Before anyone accuses me of racism - I don't mean it in that way .......but I think you will understand my general gist

I'm with you all on the edgey/narrow/heights thing - can't bear it. I don't know if I've done anything daring but I have done some pretty stupid things sometimes. When I look back at the naive 19 year old me living in Paris and travelling alone on the Metro in the early hours surrounded by N.African men, I shudder.

Not funny is it nellie, glassortwo, anagram, et al . My 6-year old grandson 'persuaded' (shamed?) me into taking him up the ramparts and two towers of Warwick Castle once. I clutched his hand all the way round and had to stop a regular intervals to 'admire the view' (let the vertigo settle).

Oh, nellie.....how awful!

It's a good job I am not very tall as I really don't do heights,we went to a windmill a few days ago and we were allowed to climb all three floors up a vertical ladder like stair case which was open all around well guess who got stuck,half way up...same happened when I took E on a helter skelter,similar type of stairs and I had to be escorted by a six year old past all the other kiddies doing the walk of shame to get off

Glass it sounds as though you agree with me.

nonu If I stand still on an edge I am OK, but when I move I see the background and foreground (where my feet are and where the ground is, far below) moving in relation to one another, and I feel dizzy. Like watching one of those bits of "artistic" filming where the camera is rotated so that any trees do cartwheels. The effect is similar to the feeling you got as a child when you stepped off a roundabout - the world whirling around you.

Do other people get this sensation? I suppose that is what gets called vertigo.

Nag when I had to wash the tops of the kitchen cupboards in my old house I was beside myself... one day DD and DS moved the chair and would not let me down off the bench ... I have never forgiven them.

Oh, I know that feeling, glass! Even when I lived in a bungalow my legs used to tremble like mad just going up the ladder to the loft - took me ages to actually set foot in there and then I had palpitations deciding which way to get down the ladders again.....oh, I have no head for heights at all!

I got stuck up a ladder today dont you dare laugh... up at the house DH was up on the roof joists and I could hear he was struggling needed help with nails or something, so I climbed the ladder and started to climb out on to the upper floor joists...... well I got one leg on the floor joist and the other on the ladder and I froze... silently crying so he couldn't hear me and wondering how long my quivering legs were going to hold me up. He asked for me to throw something up to him and I couldn't answer so he stuck his head through the floor and saw the state of me... he was very good he didnt laugh until he had come to rescue me.
My legs are still wobbly and I am having a glass of wine to recover.

Elegran , I am mistified ?

I don't believe it is really irrational. I think it is that as you move, your view of what you are are walking on and of what is away down below you slide past each other unnaturally and disorient you. Some people are more affected by that sensation than others - I am. Maybe it has something to do with the way your brain perceives the perspective.

Ah! another not sharer!

bags elegran there is no way I could do that.. my Achille's heel is 'edges' ..cliffs, paths, mountain tracks ... anything with a drop and I just cannot do it..nor watch others. And there is no reason for it, it is totally irrational.

I have done daring things in my life...some crazy and impulsive other things I took a calculated risk! But not sharing!